Everything about the railroad. Interesting facts about trains

The advent of the steam locomotive at the beginning of the 19th century transformed the world, since it was from that moment on that people and goods could move around the world at unprecedented speeds. In 1830, the first steam-powered American railway from Liverpool to Manchester opened. Decades later, the United States had crossed hundreds of thousands of railroad miles. Today, the descendants of these early railways, including the CSX Railroad, continue to play a key role in American life, transporting millions of freight cars each year. Having scrolled through the events from the days of the earliest steam locomotives to today's high-speed express trains, we have selected the most interesting facts about trains and the railway that you probably do not know.

The term "horsepower" originated as a marketing tool

James Eckford Loder: James Watt and the Steam Engine: the Dawn of the Nineteenth Century, 1855. Photo: www.wikipedia.org

James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but he created the world's first modern engine and developed a means of measuring its power. In the 1760s, a Scottish inventor began tinkering with an earlier version of the engine designed by Thomas Newcomen, whose design required constant cooling and reheating, thereby wasting an enormous amount of energy. Watt's innovation was the addition of a separate capacitor, which greatly improved the efficiency of the motor. Savvy Watt knew he needed to find a way to sell his new product. He calculated how much energy one horse running at a mill can produce in one period (many scientists believe that his estimates are too high) - a figure he called "horsepower." Using this unit of measurement, he began to indicate in numbers how many horses only one of his engines could replace. The sales gimmick worked — today we use the term “horsepower,” and its engines soon became the industry standard, leading directly to the creation of the first steam locomotive in 1804.

The first American steam locomotive lost the horse race

Steam locomotive Tom Thumb. Photo: www.neoauto.com

In 1827, Baltimore and Ohio became the first American company to receive a charter for the transport of passengers and various goods. The company struggled to create a steam engine that would help overcome rough and uneven terrain and eliminate horse-drawn traction. The inventor Peter Cooper came to the rescue, who proposed to design and build just such an engine. On August 28, 1830, Cooper's steam locomotive, (translated as "Thumb Boy"), on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the vicinity of Baltimore, went out to face off against a horse-drawn train. The locomotive immediately pulled ahead, but soon there was a problem with the belt and the horse was the first to cross the finish line. Nevertheless, the leaders of Baltimore and Ohio, impressed by what they saw, decided to switch their railway to steam. Soon, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad became one of the most successful railways in the United States, and Cooper pursued a career as an investor and philanthropist, founding the Cooper Union College of New York to support the advancement of science and the arts.

Railroad helped the North win the American Civil War

Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. Photo: Kurz & Allison / www.wikipedia.org

Throughout the war, railways made it possible to quickly transport large numbers of soldiers and heavy artillery over long distances. One of the most significant events took place after the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, when Abraham Lincoln sent 20 thousand badly needed troops almost 2 thousand km from Washington, DC, to Georgia (in just 11 days) to strengthen the Allied forces - the longest and fastest movement of the military of the 19th century. Control of the railroad in the region was critical to military success, as it was often the target of military attacks aimed at cutting off enemy supplies. The famous General William Tecumseh Sherman was particularly well versed in the art of sabotaging railways. During their infamous march through Georgia and the Carolina, his soldiers destroyed thousands of miles of Confederate rails, leaving behind heaps of heated and bent iron that Southerners dubbed "Sherman ties."

Lincoln's death promoted Pullman's trains

The interior of one of Pullman's carriages. Photo: www.barnfinds.com

George Pullman, who made a name for himself in the 1850s as a self-taught engineer and Chicago industrialist, after a disgusting train ride in upstate New York, got the idea to design a comfortable railroad sleeper car. By 1863, he had released his first two models - the Pioneer and the Springfield - the latter named after then-President Abraham Lincoln's Illinois home capital. His carriages were indeed very comfortable, but they were also prohibitively expensive, and only a few railway companies interested in renting them - until the assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865. After Lincoln's death, Pullman's carriages were used as part of a motorcade that traveled through several Northern states before returning his body to Illinois. found himself on the front page of the news when Pullman temporarily loaned one of his luxurious sleeping cars to a grieving Mary Todd Lincoln - the advertisement was a success. Two years later, he founded the Pullman Palace Car Company, which revolutionized train travel around the world. It is curious that after Pullman's death in 1897, none other than Robert Todd Lincoln, the eldest son of the assassinated president, became the head of his company.

The first travel agency in the world appeared thanks to the train

Photo: www.pinterest.de

In 1841, British entrepreneur and Baptist preacher Thomas Cook organized a train tour for 540 parishioners. Cook developed flat fares for passengers, which included tickets and meals. The trip was so successful that he expanded his operations first to the UK, then to the United States of America and Europe, providing passengers with all-inclusive packages including transportation, room and board. In 1873, a company known as Thomas Cook and Son launched international rail routes, and by 1890 it was selling over 3 million train tickets annually.

Railways spawned time zones

Plaque commemorating The General Time Convention of 1883. Photo: Municipal Reference Guy

In 1847 Great Britain adopted a uniform time system, but it took about 40 years before the United States of America joined. The US still operates in local time, which can vary from city to city (and within cities), making it nearly impossible to schedule arrival and departure times. After years of lobbying to standardize time, on October 11, 1883, representatives from all major US railways met at a conference known as The General Time Convention, during which they supported the proposal to create five time zones covering the entire country: North American Eastern Time, Central American Time , Mountain Time, and North American Pacific Time. The original plan called for a fifth time zone, Intercontinental, which was established a few years later and became known as Atlantic Standard Time. However, standard time only became officially legal when, in 1918, Congress passed legislation recognizing the time zone system and introduced a new "daylight saving time".

The railroad boom in the United States peaked in 1916

Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. Photo: Drew Jacksich / www.wikipedia.org

It didn't take long for the railways to catch on in the United States. In the same year that Tom Thumb lost the horse race, only 23 miles of railroad tracks were built in the United States. But within 20 years there were already more than 9 thousand of them, since the US government passed its first Railroad Land Grant Act, designed to attract settlers to undeveloped areas of the country. By the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, there were already 30 thousand miles (more than 21 thousand of them in the north), but lobbyists demanded the creation of a transcontinental system throughout the country. The number of rail miles continued to grow until it peaked in 1916. This year, 250 thousand miles have already been covered - enough to reach the Moon from our planet Earth.

Modern trains reach 600 km per hour

High-speed train ICE 3 on the Frankfurt-Cologne section near the Oberhaider Wald tunnel on August 25, 2007. Photo: Sebastian Terfloth / www.wikipedia.org

When the Englishman Richard Trevithick launched his first practical steam locomotive in 1804, its speed was less than 16 km per hour. Today, trains travel 30 times faster on high-speed rail lines. When the first Japanese Shinkansen appeared in 1964 before the Tokyo Olympics, its speed exceeded 209 km / h. Since then, the maximum speed of these trains has grown steadily. The current world record is 603 km per hour. However, Japan is no longer alone in high-speed rail: France, China and Germany are also working on trains that can reach extreme speeds. The United States is currently developing plans to build a high-speed rail line that will connect the Californian cities of San Francisco and Anaheim.

Basically, there is an opinion that the train is so banal, so boring, so commonplace, another thing is the planes with their hyperspeed like Mikhalkov's lines " I sat down in a chair, ate breakfast... What's happened? Arrived! " Or huge ocean liners, tearing the endless expanses of the sea, like beautiful oases in the middle of the desert. But believe me, the railway is also capable of saturating its passenger with positive emotions and all kinds of interesting things.

For example, the Qinghai-Tibetan single-track railway, the highest road on the planet, attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world every year to admire the magical Tibetan landscapes of the "roof of the world" at an altitude of more than 5000 km above sea level.

No sea or air company can offer you such romance. Of course, such extreme conditions also require special trains. The cars are completely sealed, equipped with personal oxygen masks and an oxygen supply system if necessary, and at intermediate and observation stations, passenger cars naturally do not open, because there is nothing to breathe outside of them. The Chinese themselves feel extraordinary pride in their engineering structure and put it on a par with the Great Wall of China.

No less amazing is the Thai railway, which passes through a real market! 60 km west of Bangkok in the town of Maeklong, a food market located right on the railroad tracks quickly folds its grocery stalls, rolls up awnings and scatters right in front of the trains several times a day.

But the most amazing thing is that even at this time the trade does not stop! From the open windows of the train, money flies into the merchants, and fish, sweets, fruits and other purchases fly back into the windows. The main thing here is to be able to catch! :-) Although, I believe that passengers have a knack for this business after wiping their eyes from the broken tomatoes and the phrase "I didn't catch it again!" return to the rails and trade becomes more civilized :-)

The Napier-Gisborne railroad is unique in that it crosses the main airstrip at Gisborne Airport in New Zealand. It is the only railway in the world where the air traffic control service allows or prohibits trains from crossing the runway to continue their route.

Sometimes planes and trains are literally seconds apart! This outlandish "denouement" is almost the first offer to a tourist from New Zealand guides! Agree, a steam locomotive and an airplane rushing to meet each other is a common sight for Hollywood or Indian films, but not for everyday life!

If you have already found your soul mate or are still just looking, then the railway strongly recommends visiting the beautiful Tunnel of Love, located near the village of Klevan in Ukraine. This scenic 3-kilometer stretch of railroad leads to a fibreboard factory. The train runs here three times a day, supplying wood to the Orzhevsky woodworking plant. It is the train that makes the growing branches of the trees go around the tracks and keeps the tunnel in this state.

The beautiful, sunny summer corridor attracts couples in love, and in autumn and winter photographers who want to capture this wonderful miracle of nature. It is believed that if you, having visited the "Tunnel of Love", make a cherished wish, then it will certainly come true.

The Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest railway in the world, today it has 9,300 km of tracks and is a whole network of railways between Moscow and the Russian Far East. In addition, the road has branches to all neighboring border countries. The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway began in full force back in 1891, under the personal control of Sergei Witte, who, then the Minister of Finance, clearly understood that Russia simply had to be a strategic partner between the West and the East. In order for the construction of the road and the accompanying infrastructure to keep pace with each other, the Russian leadership began construction from the east and west at the same time, striving inland. To understand the full scale of the project, it is enough to say that only in 2002 its full electrification was completed!

After reconstructing some sections of the road in the early 2000s, Russia organized the first permanent corridor of large-scale freight traffic between China, Mongolia, Belarus, Poland and Germany, which significantly increased trade turnover and contributed to the further development of the Far East as a strategic region.

The original name of the road is the Great Siberian Way. And he is great not because the construction of the road took almost a century, but because the Russian government then deliberately refused Western "help", not wanting to allow the growing influence of foreign capitalists in the Far East. They built only with OWN forces! And they could! Built!

No wonder they say that driving along the Trans-Siberian Railway means seeing half the world. Is it a joke? The famous photographer Todd Selby, who has come a long way from Paris to Shanghai by rail, claims that this is the real truth: “It's fantastic to wake up every time, look away from the map and try to understand where you are ... The seventh day of travel has come, and we still in Siberia! Siberia is very large. And Baikal is very big. But this is just a part of great Russia! "

If all the previous facts about railways do not provoke any emotion in you, then do not despair. There is still one railway in the world, which people do not get tired of admiring to this day! Well, even if you are an inveterate critic and the word “admire” is not for you, then don’t worry, you will also find a huge “portion” for discussion and condemnation here for yourself. What is this railway? This is BAM!

I would not like to argue with those who claim that BAM is a "dead end" of the Soviet era, that it was built by zeks, that this entire territory of BAM is a huge zone or a camp ... Whatever one may say, this brilliant engineering project is still around today a huge number of tales and legends ... But, nevertheless, for thousands of thousands of BAM residents, this construction remained the happiest and fondest memory. And they speak of him as a bright, romantic, heroic and the best time in their life. And so it was.

The best youth from all over the Soviet Union came, worked, settled down. Families were created here, they performed real labor feats, discoveries happened. BAM was built by the whole country.

« Through passes, rivers and swamps
We will lay the highway for centuries. Any work is not scary for us,
We came here at the call of our hearts! "

BAM was designed as part of a systematic project for the development of significant natural resources of little-explored areas, along which, in fact, the road was laid.

On the way of BAM, it was planned to build about ten territorial-industrial complexes-giants, but very "promising" Gorbachev's perestroika, allowed to complete only oneSouth Yakutsk coal complex. Then, no less "promising" privatization with great hopes handed over a number of resource deposits to private hands, but instead of loading the BAM's capacities and massive development of mineral deposits in the area of ​​the highway "at the exit", only oligarchs with yachts turned out. By the early 2000salmost all projects for the development of the zone of the Baikal-Amur Mainline were suspendedunder the "ideological" pretexts of inexpediency, and the decision of the Soviet leadership to build the BAM was diligently hung with the stigma of erroneousness and hopelessness. How truly "oligarchic" it is to hide behind the sudden "hopelessness" of the project, which for half a century was considered simply vital for Siberia and Far East according to all experts.

The only thing that warms the soul is that the current leadership of the country is seriously aimed at reviving the BAM and the region as a whole. And it's not just words. RecentlyThe Elginskoye field is successfully operating, where the first coal was mined in the summer of 2011. An access railway line is being built, connecting it with the main line. In May of this year, the first freight trains of super-heavy weight went along BAM, allowing to transport 7100 tons instead of the previous weight norm of 4800 tons, which should increase the profitability of transportation several times. This became possible after the commissioning of new powerful two-section locomotives of the 2ES5K Ermak series and diesel locomotives 2TE25A Vityaz. The trains successfully overcome the most difficult section of the route - the Kuznetsov Pass.

The railway tracks themselves on the pass were reconstructed and strengthened, and the New Kuznetsovsky tunnel was put into operation.Note to critics: “Trains have started, they won't. The pass has been reconstructed, but it will not be sometime. "Ermaki" and "Vityazi" were put into operation, but are not at the design stage. "

I am sure that a bright future awaits BAM, because a road built with love cannot but live forever!

The opening of the Moscow - St. Petersburg railroad was a real event. But simple people were in no hurry to use the innovation. A terrible rumbling thing caused genuine fear. To promote rail transport to the masses, it was decided to make travel free. And this measure had an effect. Trains soon ceased to be afraid.

The only pity is that free travel from Moscow to St. Petersburg is in the distant past. The history of the action was short-lived. It was possible to travel there and back free of charge only in the first three days after the opening of the corresponding branch of the railway.

The magic of numbers

The first trains in Russia and Europe were available to about 9% of the population of those cities between which rail links were established. Today (on average, of course) every Russian travels by rail about 9 times a year. And the total number of guests has long exceeded 1.3 billion people a year.

Notable Transsib

Among the domestic railways, the most remarkable was and remains the Trans-Siberian Railway. She has many statuses. For example, this railway is known as the longest in the world. The Transsib is 9438 kilometers, more than 8 days on the way. On the route, the train stops at 97 major stations and passes through many smaller ones.

There is also a half way on the Transsib. The station, located exactly in the middle of the railroad between Moscow and Vladivostok, is called that. The distance from "Half" to both cities is the same. The Transsib is also considered the coldest railway. Part of it runs along climatic zone, where -62˚С is the usual temperature. Noteworthy fact: the coldest point of the route does not coincide with the northernmost one.

Evolution of speed

First passenger train in the world went on rails at a speed that barely reached the mark of 33 km / h. A little later, it was possible to accelerate to 38 and even 42 kilometers per hour. Modern high-speed trains are driven by rail at a speed of 320–430 km / h. And experimental innovative trains are capable of accelerating to 603 km / h. And this, as scientists and engineers say, is far from the limit.

Freight trains set records too

The first freight railway in Russia was only 2 kilometers long. This miracle of science and technology of its time was set in motion - what do you think? Horse-drawn!

The longest freight trains in railroad history have traveled to different parts of the world. One transported coal (neither more nor less - 42,000 tons per trip) to Uraliz Ekibastuz back in the Soviet era. The train consisted of 440 carriages. Their total length exceeded 6.5 kilometers.

The record was broken in South Africa... Here a train of 660 wagons entered the route. Their total length was 7.3 km. But the experiment, unlike the Soviet one, had no practical meaning. The canvas could not withstand the load, and the railway had to be closed for a long time for repairs.

Safety first

Afraid to travel by train? Perhaps the following fact will help you change your attitude towards this transport. Traveling by rail is 45 times safer than traveling by road. The risk of getting into an accident on a train is significantly lower than in a car.

Do you want maximum security guarantees? Choose a TCS carrier. Their location in the train and modern technical equipment ensure safety and comfort during the trip.